Posted on 04/07/2022 11:31:30 AM PDT by elpadre
A European official criticized the continent’s sanctions plan for Russia and urged his colleagues to do more ahead of a vote that supported "full" sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
Member of European Parliament (MEP) Guy Verhofstadt on Wednesday slammed the governing body’s "ridiculous" approach, which he said "doesn’t work" due to the fact Russia is run by an autocrat and the people have "no real" opinion.
"That works with a democracy, with democrats, who have a public opinion, a real public opinion," Verhofstadt said. "In Russia, there is no longer a real public opinion."
He argued that the newest slate hits only a small amount of trade, such as coal, which he claimed only makes up 3% of Russian exports to Europe. He also took aim at attempts to cut off financial access, saying that "half the financial institutions are still outside the ban."
"All the rest will not work," he said. "All the rest will prolong the war."
Verhofstadt’s plea seemingly reached his colleagues, as the parliament voted Thursday to support stronger, "full" sanctions against Russia, with 513 votes in favor versus 22 against and 19 abstentions.
The vote supported a full and "immediate" embargo on Russian "oil, coal, nuclear fuel and gas." MEPs also urged all European leaders to exclude Russia from the G20 and other multilateral organizations, including Interpol, UNESCO and others.
Western allies have attempted to improve their sanctions packages after Russia appeared to resist the initial measures. Initial panic following the implementation of sanctions weakened Russia’s economy as the ruble’s value plummeted.
But Russia seemingly stabilized, thanks to strict limits from its Central Bank on currency exchange, withdrawals and hard-currency transfers that helped to rein in the wild fluctuations that initially spooked officials into shutting down trading on the Moscow Exchange .for almost
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This all could have been avoided if we had real leaders in the West like Trump. I think too many oligarchs are happy Russia is in a war and don’t care about Ukrainians anyway.
finally someone talking who knows how these sanctions work. Biden doesn’t!!
Stopped clock...and all. This is the bad teeth booger picker who Nigel Farage made his beyotch. He’s (Vehofstadt) right for once...miracles are possible!
They want a prolonged war
ACK-TUALLY, the progressive academics in Russian institutions came out in the first two weeks of the "special operation" and criticized it.
Until they realized that the Russian government wasn't lying about The West hating the average Russian citizen [made evident by the pinwheels-for-eyes attacks upon stuff like McDonald's, Fedex/UPS deliveries and Visa/Mastercard stuff].
Now they're on board with Pooty.
They’ll survive Biden’s New World Order and be stronger for it.
(\sarc ;>)
And just like that, Guy Verhofstadt accidentally revealed the goal of the west.
The Usual Suspects are finding it impossible to keep the hate ramped up to a +10. As Fox eases away from their saturation bombing, they’ll move on to the midterms and the effort to elect moderate, country club Republicans.
True words, it is now existential.
“ Member of European Parliament (MEP) Guy Verhofstadt on Wednesday slammed the governing body’s “ridiculous” approach, which he said “doesn’t work” due to the fact Russia is run by an autocrat and the people have “no real” opinion.
“That works with a democracy, with democrats, who have a public opinion, a real public opinion,” Verhofstadt said. “In Russia, there is no longer a real public opinion.”
”
Replace the word Russia with America and Putin with Biden and you have the same thing 🤪
11:26 [Alexander Mercouris of The Duran]
And I would like to just illustrate the first point about morale in Russia now.
My wife, who's an academic, is in contact with an agency in Britain that is involved with academic exchanges in Russia.
Now, I don't want to name the name of this organization. I don't want to cause any problems or embarrassments to people - but I do know that they have been conducting contacts with the various academics - these are all, I should say - Humanities academics in Russian universities.
Now, if you know anything at all about Russia and its political system and the political debates that happen there, Humanities academics in Russian universities are perhaps the single most solid anti-Putin demographic.
They're the people who most value contacts with the West, who like to travel to the West on academic exchanges, who hope to get at some point posts in Western universities. Who want all of those sort of things - and of course bear in mind that they are also the people who are overwhelmingly likely to speak Western languages - English in this particular case - and who therefore are historically going all the way back to the Soviet period the ones who have been most open to Western news.
And what is being reported back by this agency that arranges these exchanges and contacts - it's a British agency - is that in the first two weeks of the war, there was shock in amongst this group about what had happened.
Much criticism of the government and of Putin and that initially in fact within this group, it was as it always is - extremely difficult to support the war.
And that those who did support the war found themselves isolated amongst their peers.
Over the last few weeks this has changed completely and the reason for that is the response of the West - the massive sanctions war - the discrimination against Russians - as it's perceived - across the West.
The enormous attacks on Russians everywhere and this has caused a massive turnaround and consolidation behind the government amongst this precise group of people.
There's this section of Russian society - obviously it's small - but this particular section of Russian society which has historically been most critical of it.
So, the sanctions wall, the media campaign - all of that - has had the exact diametric opposite effect to the one that it used to. What it was expected to have. It has consolidated Russian society behind the government.
And of course they're all in contact with their acquaintances and friends in Ukraine. Many of them have friends in Donbass. They're getting all kinds of information from them about what's going on in Ukraine and that's apparently consolidating their support even further.
So there's been a big shift and it basically started around mid-March so that's what I've heard.
Now, obviously - this is secondhand information - it's anecdotal to some extent - but I believe that it is completely true and it reflects everything that I'm hearing about the mood in Russia.
https://youtu.be/bAqcyVTXlH4?t=688
The Duran Youtube channel
Yep, the first sanctions in 2014 weren’t mentioned outside the liberal upper middle class, who liked to travel, all things Western and didn’t like Putin much. Now they are wiping out the remnants of pro-Western strata. With further travel bans they are likely to have exactly zero people who know or have anything good to say about the West in a decade.
I think the current situation is rather tectonic for the Russian society. It is rather clear that they aren’t going to get accepted by the West ever, regardless of Russian politics. It might be the end of Peter I’s experiment replaced by the integration into Asia.
They particularly despise the neocons/globalists in DC and in Brussels.
Very refreshing to get what I consider to be accurate updates daily from them.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDuran/videos
Thank you!
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